If creativity-as-a-service doesn’t bother you, enjoy your future endeavours

IT leaders afraid of being automated out a job should embrace their humanity, says Billy MacInnes

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14 March 2024

There was an interesting story on this website recently concerning a survey of IT leaders in Ireland by Auxilion which found that 62% believe artificial intelligence (AI) will make their company’s services redundant in three to five years.

According to the research, carried out by Censuswide and involving more than 100 IT leaders and decision-makers in large enterprises across Ireland, nearly two in five (38%) would leave their job if their organisation did not invest emerging technologies like AI.

I must confess to being surprised that so many should predict the ascendency of AI in such a short timeframe with what appears to be a remarkable sense of equanimity. There doesn’t appear to be any suggestion that they are opposed to their services being made redundant by AI. The fact that close to 40% would leave their jobs if the company they worked for didn’t invest in AI says a lot.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, many services provided around IT are, by their nature, services in support of technology, mainly as a means to make it operate better and keep it running. It’s a natural progression for increasing automation in technology to be replicated by increasing automation in how it is provided and supported.

The optimist in me believes that this is the logical and optimum endpoint for IT and IT services. The slightly less optimistic part of me worries that the long history of glitches, oversights and flaws in IT development might give cause for a slight pause before entrusting everything to AI.

Still, it’s probably not that hard to see the future envisioned by the majority of those who took part in the Auxilion survey (although I’d be interested to hear the views of those who remain slightly more sceptical).

Customised = flawed

I can see the shift to automation leading to increasing harmonisation and homogenisation of software and services which, in turn, makes it much easier to deliver to a wide range of customers as the level of customisation decreases. Once that happens, it becomes quite hard to see why AI shouldn’t replace much of the human involvement that takes place at the moment.

Essentially, we’re talking about machines tending to machines. A closed circle of machines doing machine tasks.

But as the response of SXSW audiences to a video that concentrated on the keynotes and panelists that presented a positive view of AI demonstrated, things are different when it comes to machines doing human tasks, especially creative work.

As this report in Variety notes, many people weren’t impressed, to the point that they booed, loudly.

Trying to create a closed circle of machines to replace human creativity is a step too far. The only way that works is if human creativity is moulded to conform to machine-level thinking beforehand, to the point where culture is something that can be automated and replicated, harmonised and homogenised and human input becomes less and less significant.

The only way for AI to replace human creativity is if human creativity constrains itself to serve the requirements and limitations of technology. That’s the point where creativity becomes a service and the creators become redundant.

Let’s hope that’s still a long way off.